


Magic Is Power

by Eilinelithil



Series: Thoughts On A Happy Ending [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-25 03:10:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12521624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilinelithil/pseuds/Eilinelithil
Summary: Belle reflects on everything – to whom the reflection is addressed remains unspoken. Focus is Season 1 Episode 22, but references events from the life of the series to date - this story is the second in what will probably be a long series.





	Magic Is Power

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own them – if I did I’d treat them a whole hell of a lot better than ABC did.

When it's the last thing you expect, sudden rescue can be as confusing, and disturbing, as unending captivity and torture. I didn't know the time of whatever day it was, or even the month, or the season. I just remember the door opened, and I sat up, ready to flee to my corner, if needs be, expecting one of my not-so-gentle nurse attendants bringing me more medication, only to find an unfamiliar, and oddly earnest man standing in the doorway of my cell. I frowned out of suspicion, and with no introduction, no explanation, he held out a hand to me, and gave a simple instruction.

"Come with me."

In hindsight, I would have thought, with my uncertainty, that I would have hesitated at that, but I took his hand and he helped me off the bench. His serious expression, and the urgency in him, somehow undermined my suspicion, though it did little to banish my confusion, so It seemed quite reasonable, quite _sane_ even, for me to ask him who he was and why on earth he'd let me out, when I didn't know him from Adam... not exactly a surprise, as I still didn't even know myself.

"My name is Jefferson, and I need your help to do something that I can't."

They were fateful words, loaded with meaning, and were ones that I should have taken far more notice of than I ever did then. They were the beginning of a trend, a pattern... or perhaps a better way of putting it would be, the beginning of an ever-present threat that would be a part of my life from that day forward, and a very good reason for Rumple's ever present protection, even in those moments when I didn't always appreciate the way he demonstrated it. I suppose you could say I always was too independent for my own good.

"There's a man, his name is Mr. Gold. Find him.  All you have to do is tell him where you've been, and that Regina locked you up."

It made no sense to me. Gold.... Regina... who were these people, and what did they have to do with me? Confusion made me uncomfortable, and I demanded, "Wait, wait. What?"

"It's very important," he told me, speaking to me as if I really were in need of being a resident in this basement asylum. He still held my hands, and I was still almost clinging to his. "Mr. Gold 's gonna protect you, but you have to tell him Regina locked you up. He's gonna know what to do. You understand?"

Of course I understood - the words anyway - I wasn't stupid. I just didn't understand the significance of them.

There was a good deal of urgent, almost frantic commotion underway as Jefferson led me from the basement, un-noticed through the main room of the hospital and out of the door. Intense action from people... faces that I wouldn't have known even if I'd recognized them. My head twisted this way and that as I tried to make sense of it. It seemed to be centered around a boy in a room I know now to be the Intensive Care Unit of our small hospital, but at _that_ time, nothing around me made sense. I managed to work out that they were trying – somehow – to save the boy's life.

Something in me wanted to help, but Jefferson tugged on my sleeve and drew me away, practically tossing the coat he was holding into my arms. The urgency of his voice translated into his footsteps so that, much shorter than he, I had to almost trot to keep up as I slipped the coat over the thin, hospital gown that I was wearing.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask. Where were we? How would I find this Mr. Gold, and how would I know him when I had? Those were the foremost in my mind, but we were moving too quickly, and there was too much going on around me, for me to feel anything other than giddy with it all.

Jefferson brought me away from the hospital, away from captivity and there to a wide, paved road with buildings either side. Many places, many things that were unfamiliar. He told me we were on Main Street, and that I should follow the road and I would find Gold.

“You aren’t coming with me?” I asked, feeling suddenly that this was all too real. The dreamlike quality of it that had persisted since the moment he opened my cell door had vanished, and the chill wind of the real world was blowing through me. I shivered, and moved to pull the coat tighter around me.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said, and he glanced around, as if he expected at any moment that something terrible would befall him. “Go find Gold. He’ll know what to do.”

He nodded along the street and I turned to look that way, then turned back to ask how I would recognize him, but when I did, there was no Jefferson. He was gone as though he’d never existed, and I was left standing alone, feeling the gaze of the few citizens that were about on the street settle, unwelcome, on me.

Did they know me?

I caught a glimpse of myself in a nearby shop window, and my self-consciousness increased. I truly _looked_ like the mad woman that had just escaped from the asylum, and no amount of my trying to smooth the worst of the tangles out of my hair would change that. I think I even made it worse, before I decided that perhaps getting off the street – finding Gold – really would be a good idea, but… what if he thought I was crazy too? Would I taste freedom only to end up right back where I started?

Something gave me courage – perhaps the thought that it couldn’t really get any _worse_ than it had been and I set my steps at as rapid a pace I could without running, to take me along the road toward where Jefferson had nodded, and it wasn’t long before I had one of my questions answered.

What were my first impressions of Storybrooke? It’s hard to recall now. It was so long ago, and I was so focused on finding a way to locate the man I was looking for. It seemed to me that it could have been a pleasant enough place, but also the kind place where there was little privacy and everyone would know everyone else’s business, and then what would they think of me… the mad woman from the basement?

The sense of relief I felt as I arrived at the building on the corner, with its horizontal blue siding, and large display windows full of all kinds of things, but obscured by half closed blinds, was very real, but didn’t last, as all the questions came crowding back again, and I even almost thought that the cell hadn’t been all that bad. I knew nothing about the man I’d been sent to find. He could have been anyone, could have intended anything, and it was clear from Jefferson’s reluctance to bring me all the way here that there was… something in the man of which people were cautious.

The sign on the window, matching the one above the shop, said, _“Mr. Gold: Pawnbroker and Antiquities Dealer.”_ It didn’t sound too bad, and from the few curiosities I could see through the blinds that covered the window, in the dim lit interior, it certainly seemed that the shop may have contained many strange and wonderful things. Still, I hesitated. Perhaps it was the fact of the sign on the door that had been turned to _closed_ , but the hesitation lasted only a moment before, embracing my courage, and the promise of help, protection, I pushed open the door and went inside, to the tinkling of the brass bell that hung above.

He had his back to the door. The jacket he wore was black – part of a suit – dark pinstripes, very smart, and his hair hung long over the collar of it.

“Excuse me, are you Mr. Gold?”

I had to speak before I lost my nerve and it seemed a reasonable question to ask, considering it was he whom I had come to find.

“Yes, I am,” he confirmed, and moved along the counter, beginning to turn.  His voice was gruff, a hint of polite irritation colored it as he continued, “But I’m afraid the shop is closed…”

His words trailed off as he turned and the expression on his face was… what? Shock? A kind of hopeful awe and disbelief? Yet there, shining in his eyes was an undertone of unfathomable pain behind the indrawn breath.

I, once again, found myself wanting – needing – to speak.

“I was er… I was told to… to find you and… tell you that… Regina locked me up. 

He started toward me, as hesitant as my words had been. He was limping and walked with a cane.

"Does… does that… mean anything to you?”

I felt awkward, uncomfortable, in his still shocked silence, and stood like a startled deer as he stopped at arm’s length, reached out and gentle squeezed my upper arm, beside my shoulder. It was as though he couldn’t believe I was standing in front of him. But as I glanced at his hand, on my arm, I thought I felt… I knew… should have known… and then it was gone. Elusive memories… again nothing.

“You’re real,” he said, his words a prayer. “You’re alive.”

My eyes narrowed as he words sunk in. Did he know me? Was whoever I was _known_ to him and presumed lost…? Dead?

“She did this to you,” he said and that same pain that I had seen in his eyes creased his face and into that, needing to find some solid ground on which to stand that would make sense to _him_ , if not to me, I spoke again.

“I was told you’d… protect me.”

My words unlocked what he’d been holding inside and he closed the rest of the distance between us, and took me into his arms.

“Oh, yes.” He held me tightly. “Yes, I’ll protect you.”

For a moment, I closed my eyes, waiting… hoping that the rightness of that embrace, that I somehow felt, would clear away the webs of unknowing from my mind and I would know – discover once more – who I was and what was my connection with this man who was all but weeping as he held me.

The moment held only continued confusion, and feeling awkward once more, I pulled back until I could see him and said, “I’m – I’m sorry. Do… do I know you?”

I was _desperate_ for him to explain, to say something that would tell me everything I needed to know, feeling bereft in a moment that instinctively I knew should have held so much more that the empty, hollow shell of a person still lost.

His eyes filled with fresh tears and for a while it seemed as though he couldn’t speak, until he admitted, “No. But you will,” and his voice was so gentle and so full of hope that I wanted to move again, to put myself right back into his arms. I might not have known him, but it was clear that he knew me. Perhaps it was in his arms that I was _meant_ to be.

We stood for a while, too long, just lost in that time of potential, of all that we could be, but which was still hidden, before Gold seemed to pull himself together – waken from the dreamlike state of emotion in which he appeared frozen, and for the second time that day, a man I did not know told me, “Come with me,” and I followed, back out into the street a little way, and then onto a long, wooded track.

He walked faster, with his cane, than I would have thought and I soon fell behind several steps as I sought to make sense of everything that had happened in the last hour – was it even that long?

There is _no_ way to describe the moment in which my lost past was returned. One step I knew nothing, the next scuffled step I _felt_ everything; all rushing in, crowding in, threatening to be overwhelming. All the pain, and the loss, and the adventure and the hope, and the anger and the understanding – all of it was there, suddenly, inside of me, and it was clamoring for expression.

I knew this man, whom he had been in another place, at another time, though the tears didn’t quite make sense, as the last time he had spoken to me, that we had spoken to each _other,_ had been in anger as he’d thrown me out – cast me away from him for thinking that my love, and my kiss could, break the curse under which he lived, and which I have since come to understand that he _could_ not afford to break.

But it was also my love that turned my steps _back_ to him, and I wondered if, somehow, he had heard my soft-spoken words then, as I told him, “I’m coming back, Rumple,” in the seconds before The Queen had taken me as her captive. My love would never… has never let me give up on him.

At another time, in another place I might have faltered, but that one feeling rose above the cacophony and tumult of the others and was centered on the man still walking ahead of me.

“Wait,” I called out to him.

“No, no,” he said without turning, unaware of the change that had occurred in me, so singular was his focus. “We’re very close.”

I needed him to know, to understand that I had awoken.

“Rumplestiltskin, wait.”

He froze, then turned slowly, and this time, as I saw him, I knew him and took in the sight of him as my heart returned to life and beat once more in the certain promise that _this_ was the man that, in spite of everything, I had come to love, beyond all measure, beyond all reason, beyond all hope.

He looked different than the last time I had seen him. More a man, and less the Beast of the Dark Castle, but it wouldn’t have mattered to me if he had been the same, pale, scaled being that had taken me from my home in exchange for the salvation of my people. The one who had teased me, commanded me, at times confounded me and then, on the eve of realizing the power our love could hold, had cast me away.

That didn’t matter. He was here now. _We_ were here, and we could finally be together.

I closed the distance between us, and told him, “I remember. I… I love you.”

A world of emotion passed between us before we found ourselves in each other’s arms again, and this time it _did_ feel right. I could feel his love, his strength, his protection and his need to be right where we were, and for it to last beyond that moment far, far into the future, just as I had once hoped, and hope still.

“Yes,” he said, his voice thick with all that we shared. “Yes. And I love you too.” He cupped the side of my head in his hand then, and began to pull away, still speaking, “But hey, there’ll be time for that.” I lost myself in his gaze, even though his words puzzled me. “There’ll be time for everything. First… there’s something I must do.”

He walked away, and I followed him, puzzled and not a little concerned at what that _something_ might be. It might have been years, and we might well be in a place very different to our own, but the last time I had seen him he had been the Dark One. Was he the Dark One still, and if he were, what did that mean for us, and for this world?  What had he planned?

The track, narrower as we continued, more a deer track than it had been when it was wider, led to a stone well. It looked old, and out of place in the open woodland, no cottage around for it to service, not for the miles we had traveled, but it is a place that has since become, for us, another touchstone – another place to remind the both of us of the part of our hearts that each dwell within the other.

“Wh-what is this?” I asked.

“This is a very special place, Belle,” he said, so serious, and yet my heart lurched to hear my name from his lips. I had no time to savor the moment though, because I felt this was a pivotal point, for us, for everyone as he went on to explain, “The waters that run below are said to have the power to return that which one has lost.”

I didn’t understand everything, but enough that I knew to step closer, to be at his side as he pulled from his pocket, a small glass bottle in which swirled a vibrant, shifting, purple potion. He unstoppered the bottle, and then dropped it, wholesale, into the well, and I wondered at that; at how and what could have been lost that dropping a still bottled potion into the water might return.

My curiosity turned to trepidation, even fear as a wave of air flew up from the well, and I backed a step or two away, even as Rumple reached out to steady me, draw me in closer to his side as the air was followed by an undulating mass of purple smoke. It seeped from the well; crept along the ground like a stalking creature and swirled around our feet, continuing onward and outward… down toward the town we had long since left.

“I don’t understand,” I told him.

“We’re in a land without magic, Belle,” he said, and drew me closer, to revel in earnest beside me as he added, “And I’m bringing it. Magic… is coming.”

“Why?” I asked, fearful then. I knew full well from all the time I had spent with him back in the Enchanted Forest that all magic comes with a price, I knew he knew it too, for he was so fond of reminding everyone that ever came to him for aid, or a spell, or to seek a solution to some seeming insurmountable problem that only magic could solve. I had heard it from his lips many times. For him to be _willing_ to pay whatever price would be exacted for his bringing magic to a land without it, it _must_ have been something terribly important.

“Why?” he queried, then still holding me tightly answered, “Because magic… is power.”

Still the need for power, but the words he spoke answered my earlier question. Was he still the Dark One – yes, clearly, he was, but what did it mean in this strange world that until that moment had been without magic? What would it mean for us?

I wasn’t afraid of it, or of him, not then… not ever – even in our darkest moments, and we have had many – and none darker than when our first child was born – it was never only fear. I still did not, then, understand that he needed the power to find his son; to find Baelfire and set to rights the wrongs wrought between them so long before.

If I had known, would I have looked more kindly on his need for it? Perhaps. I certainly would have understood, but standing there by the well, still billowing forth the magic that Rumple had kindled in this place, I only knew that I _had_ to be with him, to save him from himself, and from the darkness that was still a part of him, and hoped that maybe – one day – I might be strong enough to show him the light, and bring him to embrace _that_ as a part of himself too.


End file.
